Why We Need the Tabloids

[Commentary] Rupert Murdoch, in his grilling before a Parliamentary inquiry, said that he did not support an absolute right to privacy. He should be commended for that, even though many of the tactics used by journalists at his now-shuttered News of the World — hacking into the cellphone messages of crime victims, slain soldiers’ families, government officials and members of the royal family, and paying police sources for information — were beyond the pale of acceptable reporting.

One does not have to support illegal activity in order to defend intrusive reporting. Perhaps intrusiveness is “indecent,” but who’s to say that is reason enough to tighten restrictions or create new laws to prevent it (or create another flaccid governmental investigation into the activities of the press, as Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered)? The concepts of privacy and decency are so slippery (and class-bound) that they are not really the stuff of effective (or desirable) legislation when it comes to the press. The truth is that the vast majority of the tabloids carry out their news coverage above board. They are not an external source of infection, slowly contaminating the mainstream press, but rather an extension, and often an exaggeration, of the basic logic that animates all news reporting. The work of the tabloids can be irritating, provocative, ethically questionable and even (as the scandal spectacularly shows) highly illegal, but when practiced according to existing laws, tabloid journalism can be an important player in modern culture, helping to mitigate some of the central tensions in democratic society. Journalism has always been marked by a battle to define the boundaries of acceptable investigative behavior. The tabloids — just as they ought — constantly test those boundaries.

[Linkof is a lecturer in history at the University of Southern California]